Ciao, Tutti!
Check out this great video my friend Greg made for me! He's teaching himself hand-held video recording and editing techniques for his job, and I'm one of his first test subjects. It came out pretty good I have to say. I look like a real, honest to goodness musician! Weird, huh?
You'll have to forgive my not having posted in a while. I've been going through some emotional anxiety, and while that hasn't stopped me from posting in the past it certainly was now. But I'll try to do better to my few readers and post some new writing, and perhaps one of those music reviews I promised all those eons ago. Or, who knows? Maybe I'll have news about ESL jobs in Turkey (I have my first interview on Monday - wish me luck!). Or maybe I can brag about winning the Bellevue Literary Review's annual contest (I doubt it, but who knows?). Or maybe I'll post some cool stuff about the wonderful stuff Owl Eyes is up to for the time I'm here in New York City.
But one thing's for sure: if I go this long without posting again, you all have permission to yell at me and call me names, then paint me while I sleep. Huzzah!
-Sam goldsmith
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Novel Excerpt - Prologue of Outside the Crystal
Note: These are the first pages of the first book.
Before the Nembath Incident, when Raychel still could walk around in broad daylight, she and Braden used to sneak out of school from time to time and explore the nearby forest. Together they discovered a pond as wide as their school building, a place they thought belonged only to them until they found a can clumsily wedged in the mud, sloppy shoe tread surrounding the spot. Even so, they never saw another person at the pond, so it was theirs. They named it Frog Pond, after the nice-sized green creatures that lived there. They loved to show off the power of their legs; Raychel and Braden had never managed to catch one.
A small mound near the south bank overlooked Frog Pond. It wasn’t much of a mound, but it was just high enough to see the snowy tips of the twin peaks, Pilorite and Silorite, if Raychel stood on the tips of her toes and the sky was clear. The only place she could see all of Frog pond was on top of that mound, all except a small gulf that protruded eastward, ducking out of sight behind the everglades. The mound was Raychel’s favorite place around Frog Pond. Being able to see everything, from the extremities of the water to the tops of the mountains, Raychel felt more confident in herself than she ever could in the classroom, drilled with Geography.
“No, Port Youl is here,” her teacher had said to her earlier, pointing to the map. “Close to the Northern Islands.”
Raychel muttered, “Whatever.” The teacher heard it.
“Port Youl is a beautiful city, Raychel,” he said. “Don’t you want to visit sometime? You’ll have to know where it is first.”
Raychel despised her teacher’s voice. He pronounced her name as if it were missing the Y, a two-syllable word like the Oriathian name. “I don’t ever want to leave Brodaw,” she said with conviction.
“Now you’re just being stubborn. Not even to Nembath, the magnificent Lightning City?” He spread his arms and salesman smile wide.
“Lightning City,” said Raychel flatly. “That sounds safe.”
Note in her hand, she was sent to visit the school counselor, again. She threw the note away and slipped away to the forest. Braden found her on the top of the hill, meditating with her legs crossed. “I told the teacher I had to go to the bathroom,” he said.
Braden’s favorite place around Frog Pond was not the mound but in the everglades, on the bank. He said he liked the mud and the feeling that he couldn’t be seen. Raychel always felt like resisting when he wanted to crouch down in the frigid murk. They would dirty their clothes and return home wet and shivering, their shoes making nauseating squishing noises, to parents who would surely guess where they had been instead of class. He didn’t think about that, it seemed, as much as she did. He felt more in touch with nature when he waded knee-deep along the pond’s swampy bank. There was no resisting Braden, and as much as she preferred the mound she preferred him more.
Braden undid the strings on his dirt and grass stained bag. “I brought something from home,” he said, shuffling his hand around inside. “Dad let me borrow to help catch a frog.” His fingers scraped against the canvass sides until he found what he was looking for and eagerly withdrew it. His fist was wrapped around a small cable, a miniature fan dangling at the end. Opening his fist and bending over, he showed her a small, wooden, banana-shaped object with a rectangular hole carved into the center, inside of which was a tangle of mesh. Raychel leaned over with curiosity, and her scalp nearly brushed against his.
“What is it?” asked Raychel.
“It’s a boat,” said Braden. “The fan moves it forward, and I control it with the remote control. Here, hold this.” Before Raychel could say anything she was holding the boat and the sound of Braden’s hand clawing against the canvas resumed. Raychel lifted a fragment of the mesh with her index finger, cautiously contemplating its shape.
“Is this a net?” she said.
“Yep,” said Braden. “Got it!” He extracted a compact black box that looked like a child’s building block but with a small joystick planted in the middle. “It’s pretty simple,” he said, flipping a switch with an assured click. The fan struggled against Raychel’s steadying hand, and she politely dropped it as if startled by bumping into a person’s shoulder on the street. Braden caught it with his free hand. “Be careful, Raychel!” he exclaimed not giving the impression that he was upset or worried that the machine would break, not for a minute. He pronounced her name like it was supposed to be pronounced.
“What does your dad use it for?” said Raychel. “Catching frogs?”
“Hm,” Braden considered. “I’m not sure, actually. I know there’s a camera on the bottom, so he can take remote pictures in dangerous waters, from a safe distance. I’m not sure what the net’s for, though. I’m not really into that Hero Team thing, you know.”
In the middle of Frog Pond, closest to the east side near the mountains, there was a small island where the frogs liked to spend their time. The only other times Raychel and Braden had tried to capture a frog was when it ventured to the far shore, an irregular occurrence. Braden promised that when the mountain winds died down and the air warmed up again, they would swim together to the island, where they would surely be able to catch a frog. Raychel hated swimming, but she nodded anyway.
Braden and Raychel crouched together in the everglades, watching the island in the middle of Frog Pond, their backs to the mound. Braden held the boat steady in his hand, pinching the motor’s blades to keep it still but ready. Raychel’s butt was getting moist in the mud. She could feel the water spreading through the fabric of her school clothes. She tried not to think about how her parents would react, not because of their reluctance to send them through the wash again but because she would have to admit she skipped class. She felt the dirty water bleeding through her underwear, cold and itchy, and she had to bite her tongue not to squirm. She glanced at Braden. His blue eyes were locked on the island, his eyebrows down in deep concentration, making blubbery lines in his young forehead.
“Isn’t there a better way to catch a frog?” Raychel whispered. “Isn’t using the net kind of cruel?”
“We’re catching it either way,” said Braden just as softly, not changing his expression. There were still no frogs, as if they knew the two kids were up to something.
Eventually Raychel’s clothes reached their peak of saturation, or she had stopped noticing its spread. The water was cold and her feet were numb. She and Braden had spent many days together here on the banks of the pond before, but never before had they waited in one place for so long. Usually they walked the circumference of the pond, taking large steps that lifted their knees to their chests, eyes darting about at the slightest peripheral movement. Now it felt that they were preparing for an ambush. Raychel couldn’t help but feel the fear of the unseen frog that was to be Braden’s first victim. While Raychel’s interest in frog-catching stemmed from a mild excitement about having a pet – there was a jar with holes punched in the lid in her bag – Raychel knew Braden wanted something different. He wanted to beat the frog in a physical and mental competition, to test his own ability to plan ahead and outsmart another living, thinking creature. He was more like his father than he was willing to admit.
Suddenly Braden leaned forward anxiously, pursing his lips tightly together, and released the boat’s motor to purr noiselessly underwater. Raychel looked out towards the island, following Braden’s eyes. There, on the end of the island, squatted a fat frog, facing the opposite direction, its skin glistening in the sun almost like plastic. It looked like a plastic windup toy until it took a deep breath and Raychel heard it croak. It was the perfect target for Braden: facing away, lethargically motionless in a patch of reviving sun, slowed by obesity. The frog didn’t stand a chance, Raychel knew as the boat inched closer along the surface of the water, the mesh inside poised to launch. Soon the net would wrap around the creature and it would flop around, kicking wildly with its uselessly muscular legs, hurling itself without direction in a blind, desperate panic.
Raychel knew she had to warn the frog. Surreptitiously reaching her hand out, watching Braden’s eyes to make sure he didn’t notice, she felt her fingertips glide invisibly through the barrier of air between her and a pebble on the faraway island’s edge. She felt the tips of her fingers achieve distance, and she knew that if she were to wave she would have seen stony fingers oscillating twenty meters away. But the shape of her fingers had become gray, rounded, and small. She felt the cold, steady will of the stone in the tips of her fingers, and with it the instinctual tingle to freeze in her place and remain stoically still, forever. But the urge was small and easy to resist. She moved her hand to the side, watching the distant pebbly fingertip hover above the pond’s surface with the rest of her hand. She took another quick glance at Braden; he was too concentrated on the frog to notice the floating stone. Raychel released the pebble from her influence, feeling the relief of warm blood pulsing through her digits, and dropping it into the water. It made no sound Raychel could hear, but it was enough for the frog to dive into the pond with alarm.
“Ah!” cried Braden with frustration. “We were so close!”
“Close is good,” said Raychel sarcastically. “Braden, I’m cold. Let’s go back to the mound.”
Braden began to reel the boat back in, his eyes still fixed on the spot where the frog had been, disappointed longing replacing the frenzied concentration of moments before. “Fine,” he said.
On the way back to the mound Raychel couldn’t help but shiver, and Braden wrapped his arm around her shoulder. He wasn’t cold at all. He was so warm.
It was this practice of sneaking away from school that, by a stroke of dumb luck, saved Raychel’s life.
Before the Nembath Incident, when Raychel still could walk around in broad daylight, she and Braden used to sneak out of school from time to time and explore the nearby forest. Together they discovered a pond as wide as their school building, a place they thought belonged only to them until they found a can clumsily wedged in the mud, sloppy shoe tread surrounding the spot. Even so, they never saw another person at the pond, so it was theirs. They named it Frog Pond, after the nice-sized green creatures that lived there. They loved to show off the power of their legs; Raychel and Braden had never managed to catch one.
A small mound near the south bank overlooked Frog Pond. It wasn’t much of a mound, but it was just high enough to see the snowy tips of the twin peaks, Pilorite and Silorite, if Raychel stood on the tips of her toes and the sky was clear. The only place she could see all of Frog pond was on top of that mound, all except a small gulf that protruded eastward, ducking out of sight behind the everglades. The mound was Raychel’s favorite place around Frog Pond. Being able to see everything, from the extremities of the water to the tops of the mountains, Raychel felt more confident in herself than she ever could in the classroom, drilled with Geography.
“No, Port Youl is here,” her teacher had said to her earlier, pointing to the map. “Close to the Northern Islands.”
Raychel muttered, “Whatever.” The teacher heard it.
“Port Youl is a beautiful city, Raychel,” he said. “Don’t you want to visit sometime? You’ll have to know where it is first.”
Raychel despised her teacher’s voice. He pronounced her name as if it were missing the Y, a two-syllable word like the Oriathian name. “I don’t ever want to leave Brodaw,” she said with conviction.
“Now you’re just being stubborn. Not even to Nembath, the magnificent Lightning City?” He spread his arms and salesman smile wide.
“Lightning City,” said Raychel flatly. “That sounds safe.”
Note in her hand, she was sent to visit the school counselor, again. She threw the note away and slipped away to the forest. Braden found her on the top of the hill, meditating with her legs crossed. “I told the teacher I had to go to the bathroom,” he said.
Braden’s favorite place around Frog Pond was not the mound but in the everglades, on the bank. He said he liked the mud and the feeling that he couldn’t be seen. Raychel always felt like resisting when he wanted to crouch down in the frigid murk. They would dirty their clothes and return home wet and shivering, their shoes making nauseating squishing noises, to parents who would surely guess where they had been instead of class. He didn’t think about that, it seemed, as much as she did. He felt more in touch with nature when he waded knee-deep along the pond’s swampy bank. There was no resisting Braden, and as much as she preferred the mound she preferred him more.
Braden undid the strings on his dirt and grass stained bag. “I brought something from home,” he said, shuffling his hand around inside. “Dad let me borrow to help catch a frog.” His fingers scraped against the canvass sides until he found what he was looking for and eagerly withdrew it. His fist was wrapped around a small cable, a miniature fan dangling at the end. Opening his fist and bending over, he showed her a small, wooden, banana-shaped object with a rectangular hole carved into the center, inside of which was a tangle of mesh. Raychel leaned over with curiosity, and her scalp nearly brushed against his.
“What is it?” asked Raychel.
“It’s a boat,” said Braden. “The fan moves it forward, and I control it with the remote control. Here, hold this.” Before Raychel could say anything she was holding the boat and the sound of Braden’s hand clawing against the canvas resumed. Raychel lifted a fragment of the mesh with her index finger, cautiously contemplating its shape.
“Is this a net?” she said.
“Yep,” said Braden. “Got it!” He extracted a compact black box that looked like a child’s building block but with a small joystick planted in the middle. “It’s pretty simple,” he said, flipping a switch with an assured click. The fan struggled against Raychel’s steadying hand, and she politely dropped it as if startled by bumping into a person’s shoulder on the street. Braden caught it with his free hand. “Be careful, Raychel!” he exclaimed not giving the impression that he was upset or worried that the machine would break, not for a minute. He pronounced her name like it was supposed to be pronounced.
“What does your dad use it for?” said Raychel. “Catching frogs?”
“Hm,” Braden considered. “I’m not sure, actually. I know there’s a camera on the bottom, so he can take remote pictures in dangerous waters, from a safe distance. I’m not sure what the net’s for, though. I’m not really into that Hero Team thing, you know.”
In the middle of Frog Pond, closest to the east side near the mountains, there was a small island where the frogs liked to spend their time. The only other times Raychel and Braden had tried to capture a frog was when it ventured to the far shore, an irregular occurrence. Braden promised that when the mountain winds died down and the air warmed up again, they would swim together to the island, where they would surely be able to catch a frog. Raychel hated swimming, but she nodded anyway.
Braden and Raychel crouched together in the everglades, watching the island in the middle of Frog Pond, their backs to the mound. Braden held the boat steady in his hand, pinching the motor’s blades to keep it still but ready. Raychel’s butt was getting moist in the mud. She could feel the water spreading through the fabric of her school clothes. She tried not to think about how her parents would react, not because of their reluctance to send them through the wash again but because she would have to admit she skipped class. She felt the dirty water bleeding through her underwear, cold and itchy, and she had to bite her tongue not to squirm. She glanced at Braden. His blue eyes were locked on the island, his eyebrows down in deep concentration, making blubbery lines in his young forehead.
“Isn’t there a better way to catch a frog?” Raychel whispered. “Isn’t using the net kind of cruel?”
“We’re catching it either way,” said Braden just as softly, not changing his expression. There were still no frogs, as if they knew the two kids were up to something.
Eventually Raychel’s clothes reached their peak of saturation, or she had stopped noticing its spread. The water was cold and her feet were numb. She and Braden had spent many days together here on the banks of the pond before, but never before had they waited in one place for so long. Usually they walked the circumference of the pond, taking large steps that lifted their knees to their chests, eyes darting about at the slightest peripheral movement. Now it felt that they were preparing for an ambush. Raychel couldn’t help but feel the fear of the unseen frog that was to be Braden’s first victim. While Raychel’s interest in frog-catching stemmed from a mild excitement about having a pet – there was a jar with holes punched in the lid in her bag – Raychel knew Braden wanted something different. He wanted to beat the frog in a physical and mental competition, to test his own ability to plan ahead and outsmart another living, thinking creature. He was more like his father than he was willing to admit.
Suddenly Braden leaned forward anxiously, pursing his lips tightly together, and released the boat’s motor to purr noiselessly underwater. Raychel looked out towards the island, following Braden’s eyes. There, on the end of the island, squatted a fat frog, facing the opposite direction, its skin glistening in the sun almost like plastic. It looked like a plastic windup toy until it took a deep breath and Raychel heard it croak. It was the perfect target for Braden: facing away, lethargically motionless in a patch of reviving sun, slowed by obesity. The frog didn’t stand a chance, Raychel knew as the boat inched closer along the surface of the water, the mesh inside poised to launch. Soon the net would wrap around the creature and it would flop around, kicking wildly with its uselessly muscular legs, hurling itself without direction in a blind, desperate panic.
Raychel knew she had to warn the frog. Surreptitiously reaching her hand out, watching Braden’s eyes to make sure he didn’t notice, she felt her fingertips glide invisibly through the barrier of air between her and a pebble on the faraway island’s edge. She felt the tips of her fingers achieve distance, and she knew that if she were to wave she would have seen stony fingers oscillating twenty meters away. But the shape of her fingers had become gray, rounded, and small. She felt the cold, steady will of the stone in the tips of her fingers, and with it the instinctual tingle to freeze in her place and remain stoically still, forever. But the urge was small and easy to resist. She moved her hand to the side, watching the distant pebbly fingertip hover above the pond’s surface with the rest of her hand. She took another quick glance at Braden; he was too concentrated on the frog to notice the floating stone. Raychel released the pebble from her influence, feeling the relief of warm blood pulsing through her digits, and dropping it into the water. It made no sound Raychel could hear, but it was enough for the frog to dive into the pond with alarm.
“Ah!” cried Braden with frustration. “We were so close!”
“Close is good,” said Raychel sarcastically. “Braden, I’m cold. Let’s go back to the mound.”
Braden began to reel the boat back in, his eyes still fixed on the spot where the frog had been, disappointed longing replacing the frenzied concentration of moments before. “Fine,” he said.
On the way back to the mound Raychel couldn’t help but shiver, and Braden wrapped his arm around her shoulder. He wasn’t cold at all. He was so warm.
It was this practice of sneaking away from school that, by a stroke of dumb luck, saved Raychel’s life.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
New Song - Extraordinary Passion Inaction
Ciao, Tutti!
Great news! For the past week I've been working on a new piece of music to share with you all, be it programming drums, writing lyrics, laying guitar tracks, singing, or mixing. Of all the self-recorded pieces, this is by far the best in terms of recording quality, so I urge you all to go listen to "Extraordinary Passion Inaction," the first song you'll see at the First Regrets official MySpace. Hope you enjoy!
-Sam goldsmith
Great news! For the past week I've been working on a new piece of music to share with you all, be it programming drums, writing lyrics, laying guitar tracks, singing, or mixing. Of all the self-recorded pieces, this is by far the best in terms of recording quality, so I urge you all to go listen to "Extraordinary Passion Inaction," the first song you'll see at the First Regrets official MySpace. Hope you enjoy!
-Sam goldsmith
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Short Story - Why Sean Connery Always Gets The Girl
1365 words
I was sitting at a table in the Square Root Café, one hand around a dull white coffee mug, the other writing in my journal with a light blue mechanical pencil, when Charles came in and sat across from me.
“I’ll say, dear boy, you look like you’ve been having a rough spot with the ladies lately, am I right?” he said.
“Um,” I said.
“Don’t deny it!” Charles bellowed. “You’ve just been left by your woman, I can tell. The careless slouch, the half-awake eyes, your sagging cheeks, your slack lips, all give it away. I can recognize a heartbreak from a kilometer away, and you’ve got it bad.”
I believed him. He seemed to have come from an instantaneous kilometer away, and now he dominated my attention as if my – our – table were floating in the middle of the ocean.
“You haven’t been able to put her our of your mind yet, have you?” He smiled from ear to ear. “It must not have happened terribly long ago. You look to have the gait of an experienced lover; tell me, which was it? Third? Fourth?”
I mumbled, “First.”
Charles gave an animated wince, pursing his lips and both of his eyelids. “I’m sorry, old boy. You must feel dreadfully distraught.” He chuckled at the alliteration, giving no thought to his wrong guess earlier.
“Thanks,” I said to my coffee. I was sure he would have reacted this way no matter how I chose to answer, that he reacted this way each time he saw a heartbreak from a kilometer away.
“Don’t mention it! In fact, I’d love to help you however I can.” His smile took a wicked turn up on his face. “I’m sure you’d like to see her hurt right now,” he said.
“What?”
“Oh, come off it, you know you do!” He shoved his palm into my shoulder good-naturedly. “You want to make her heart ache the way yours does now, get revenge for how she wronged you, make her cry, have her realize the mistake she made in letting you go at the same time she comes to understand how she will never win you back, make her feel like she’ll never want to love someone else ever again, scar her for life, fill her with a lifetime of regrets, am I right?” Before I could respond, Charles had grabbed the shoulder he had just rammed and gave it a good shake, jostling my whole limp body with it, as he leaned in close. “My services can make all these possibilities into firm realities.”
He handed me a business card while still leaning intrusively forward, his intoxicating wintergreen breath placing me on the verge of dizziness. I hesitantly took the card and even more hesitantly looked down from him and to the nearly blank card. “Professional PhD,” I read aloud. “Making women cry for 15 years.” I looked up again, relieved and terrified to see he hadn’t moved a centimeter. “PhD?”
“Personal happiness doctor, get with the program,” Charles said impatiently. “Here’s what I do: I seduce your cheating ex-lover – she is a cheater, correct? I’m just assuming – lure her into a deep and loving relationship, drive her hopping mad over me, then like that,” he snapped his fingers so suddenly it made me jump, “leave her in the lurch, just like she left you.” He laughed heartily and leaned back again, finally. “And you get your supreme satisfaction for just two payments of $200.”
“$200?” I said.
“I have a family to feed, I’ll have you know!” cried Charles, suddenly cross. “Dear boy, you surely didn’t think I would do this for free, just because I pitied your pathetic emotional emptiness! You expect your just dues when you do a job as expertly as I!”
“You mean, seducing…”
He cut me off. “You don’t think I can do it, am I right?” I made to tell him that this accusation wasn’t so, that, for a reason lodged deep inside my brain I was sure he could carry off whatever act of seduction he please, but he was already speaking again. “Well, I can assure you that my track record for seduction is paramount! Let me ask you something: why do you think Sean Connery always gets the girl?”
“Um,” I said. “Because he’s cool?”
“Because of his accent!” Charles broke into a smile, and suddenly I understood something about him I couldn’t place before. The tone of his voice, his distinct pronunciation sounded just like Sean Connery’s as it did in any of the movies in which I’d seen him. Charles even looked like him, I came to notice, like the younger Sean Connery, as if I were seated across from James Bond on the set of Goldfinger.
“I can see what you’re thinking from the expression on your face,” Charles continued happily. “You want to know exactly how I plan to seduce… what’s the damn damsel’s name again?”
“Sherrie.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” proclaimed Charles over me, deaf to what I said. “First, along with your down-payment, you will give me her contact information, work information, and online networking personal web addresses. Anything else you can offer in this regard would be greatly appreciated as well. Using this information I will follow her for 72 hours, studying her every move.”
“You’re going to stalk her?” I was genuinely horrified.
“My dear boy!” Charles cried. “Ladies love to be stalked! It’s a maddening obsession of theirs! They’re captivated by the notion of a man waiting each day on a street she normally walks through, hoping for a glimpse of her by the laundromat, frequenting wherever she volunteers just to keep her face fresh for his lovesick fantasies, waiting to get on the bus until she arrives at the stop just to ride in her presence. Women find it hopelessly romantic.”
“They do?” My eyes darted around, looking for a way out, but all I could see was whiteness, like looking at the sun through eyelids.
“Of course they do!” Charles exclaimed. “How do you think Sean Connery gets the girl?”
“His accent?”
Charles threw his hands helplessly into the air. “Because he’s a spy! Now tell me, what lady do you know of who, when confronted with the notion of making sweet, passionate love to a spy, would refuse?”
Sherrie, I thought, sending me to the cliff’s edge of a memory when I heard, “Cheeseburger, no pickle, no onions!” I closed my notebook and tucked it under my arm as I stood up, pushing the chair away with the backs of my knees, the metal legs grinding against the hard floor. I glanced out the windows as I walked up to the counter, at that street corner in awkward Bed-Stuy, with its under-construction condo shell towering above chipped-paint shacks, blocked from the street by cheap wooden planks swarmed by 8½ by 11 black-and-white fliers printed in Hebrew. I walked past the wobbly café tables I took for granted and their stony chairs with thin cushions that helped us count of blessings. I was the only customer there except for another regular, a short black man sipping his tea as far opposite me as he could be – here it was, Sunday afternoon, and the Square Root Café had only two guests, neither of whom elected to take advantage of the lumpy, sinkhole sofas at the far end, close to the closet bathroom.
At the counter the girl, acting as the, cook, waitress, cashier, dishwasher, and only employee of the day, handed me the burger without a smile. She was the usual here, but I’d seen her a few times whenever the fat, blond, middle-aged woman was out. This young woman had a tattoo of a green snake wrapping up her arm and ducking under her sleeve at the shoulder. She looked like she was pretty young, about my age. I hadn’t looked at her in that way before.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve got a question, something I’ve been wondering about. Why does Sean Connery always get the girl?”
“Beats me,” she shrugged, not looking up. She dragged a wet washcloth along the countertop. “Personally I think he’s kinda slimy.”
Fine
- Sam goldsmith
I was sitting at a table in the Square Root Café, one hand around a dull white coffee mug, the other writing in my journal with a light blue mechanical pencil, when Charles came in and sat across from me.
“I’ll say, dear boy, you look like you’ve been having a rough spot with the ladies lately, am I right?” he said.
“Um,” I said.
“Don’t deny it!” Charles bellowed. “You’ve just been left by your woman, I can tell. The careless slouch, the half-awake eyes, your sagging cheeks, your slack lips, all give it away. I can recognize a heartbreak from a kilometer away, and you’ve got it bad.”
I believed him. He seemed to have come from an instantaneous kilometer away, and now he dominated my attention as if my – our – table were floating in the middle of the ocean.
“You haven’t been able to put her our of your mind yet, have you?” He smiled from ear to ear. “It must not have happened terribly long ago. You look to have the gait of an experienced lover; tell me, which was it? Third? Fourth?”
I mumbled, “First.”
Charles gave an animated wince, pursing his lips and both of his eyelids. “I’m sorry, old boy. You must feel dreadfully distraught.” He chuckled at the alliteration, giving no thought to his wrong guess earlier.
“Thanks,” I said to my coffee. I was sure he would have reacted this way no matter how I chose to answer, that he reacted this way each time he saw a heartbreak from a kilometer away.
“Don’t mention it! In fact, I’d love to help you however I can.” His smile took a wicked turn up on his face. “I’m sure you’d like to see her hurt right now,” he said.
“What?”
“Oh, come off it, you know you do!” He shoved his palm into my shoulder good-naturedly. “You want to make her heart ache the way yours does now, get revenge for how she wronged you, make her cry, have her realize the mistake she made in letting you go at the same time she comes to understand how she will never win you back, make her feel like she’ll never want to love someone else ever again, scar her for life, fill her with a lifetime of regrets, am I right?” Before I could respond, Charles had grabbed the shoulder he had just rammed and gave it a good shake, jostling my whole limp body with it, as he leaned in close. “My services can make all these possibilities into firm realities.”
He handed me a business card while still leaning intrusively forward, his intoxicating wintergreen breath placing me on the verge of dizziness. I hesitantly took the card and even more hesitantly looked down from him and to the nearly blank card. “Professional PhD,” I read aloud. “Making women cry for 15 years.” I looked up again, relieved and terrified to see he hadn’t moved a centimeter. “PhD?”
“Personal happiness doctor, get with the program,” Charles said impatiently. “Here’s what I do: I seduce your cheating ex-lover – she is a cheater, correct? I’m just assuming – lure her into a deep and loving relationship, drive her hopping mad over me, then like that,” he snapped his fingers so suddenly it made me jump, “leave her in the lurch, just like she left you.” He laughed heartily and leaned back again, finally. “And you get your supreme satisfaction for just two payments of $200.”
“$200?” I said.
“I have a family to feed, I’ll have you know!” cried Charles, suddenly cross. “Dear boy, you surely didn’t think I would do this for free, just because I pitied your pathetic emotional emptiness! You expect your just dues when you do a job as expertly as I!”
“You mean, seducing…”
He cut me off. “You don’t think I can do it, am I right?” I made to tell him that this accusation wasn’t so, that, for a reason lodged deep inside my brain I was sure he could carry off whatever act of seduction he please, but he was already speaking again. “Well, I can assure you that my track record for seduction is paramount! Let me ask you something: why do you think Sean Connery always gets the girl?”
“Um,” I said. “Because he’s cool?”
“Because of his accent!” Charles broke into a smile, and suddenly I understood something about him I couldn’t place before. The tone of his voice, his distinct pronunciation sounded just like Sean Connery’s as it did in any of the movies in which I’d seen him. Charles even looked like him, I came to notice, like the younger Sean Connery, as if I were seated across from James Bond on the set of Goldfinger.
“I can see what you’re thinking from the expression on your face,” Charles continued happily. “You want to know exactly how I plan to seduce… what’s the damn damsel’s name again?”
“Sherrie.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” proclaimed Charles over me, deaf to what I said. “First, along with your down-payment, you will give me her contact information, work information, and online networking personal web addresses. Anything else you can offer in this regard would be greatly appreciated as well. Using this information I will follow her for 72 hours, studying her every move.”
“You’re going to stalk her?” I was genuinely horrified.
“My dear boy!” Charles cried. “Ladies love to be stalked! It’s a maddening obsession of theirs! They’re captivated by the notion of a man waiting each day on a street she normally walks through, hoping for a glimpse of her by the laundromat, frequenting wherever she volunteers just to keep her face fresh for his lovesick fantasies, waiting to get on the bus until she arrives at the stop just to ride in her presence. Women find it hopelessly romantic.”
“They do?” My eyes darted around, looking for a way out, but all I could see was whiteness, like looking at the sun through eyelids.
“Of course they do!” Charles exclaimed. “How do you think Sean Connery gets the girl?”
“His accent?”
Charles threw his hands helplessly into the air. “Because he’s a spy! Now tell me, what lady do you know of who, when confronted with the notion of making sweet, passionate love to a spy, would refuse?”
Sherrie, I thought, sending me to the cliff’s edge of a memory when I heard, “Cheeseburger, no pickle, no onions!” I closed my notebook and tucked it under my arm as I stood up, pushing the chair away with the backs of my knees, the metal legs grinding against the hard floor. I glanced out the windows as I walked up to the counter, at that street corner in awkward Bed-Stuy, with its under-construction condo shell towering above chipped-paint shacks, blocked from the street by cheap wooden planks swarmed by 8½ by 11 black-and-white fliers printed in Hebrew. I walked past the wobbly café tables I took for granted and their stony chairs with thin cushions that helped us count of blessings. I was the only customer there except for another regular, a short black man sipping his tea as far opposite me as he could be – here it was, Sunday afternoon, and the Square Root Café had only two guests, neither of whom elected to take advantage of the lumpy, sinkhole sofas at the far end, close to the closet bathroom.
At the counter the girl, acting as the, cook, waitress, cashier, dishwasher, and only employee of the day, handed me the burger without a smile. She was the usual here, but I’d seen her a few times whenever the fat, blond, middle-aged woman was out. This young woman had a tattoo of a green snake wrapping up her arm and ducking under her sleeve at the shoulder. She looked like she was pretty young, about my age. I hadn’t looked at her in that way before.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve got a question, something I’ve been wondering about. Why does Sean Connery always get the girl?”
“Beats me,” she shrugged, not looking up. She dragged a wet washcloth along the countertop. “Personally I think he’s kinda slimy.”
Fine
- Sam goldsmith
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Short Story: The Perfect Album
2856 words
No one is quite sure when the perfect album came into existence. Everyone went to sleep one night, and the next morning there it was. A music historian traced it as far back as he could and discovered very little of use; where it came from or who produced it, there being no language or illustrations on the jacket. There seemed to be no distributor, either; the perfect album simply appeared without announcement in record stores around the world, just as ghastly as it came into our lives. The music buyer at Amoeba Music in Los Angeles had no recollection of purchasing it: “I wish I could take the credit,” he said. After interviewing every employee at Amoeba within six months of the perfect record’s estimated release date, the music historian found that none of the employees could even remember stocking it. And yet there it was, waiting to be bought, and when it was the word spread like a rash. No one knows who bought the first copy. Stores didn’t catalogue the album, and how could they, for an album without genre, artist, producer, or title? It would come to pass, though, that over six billion people would own a copy.
The perfect album held the world hostage for a time – some say for a day, others a week – when businesses shut down as listeners failed to go to work. Streets were empty, cars left in their driveways, phones unused, televisions silent and black. It is said that Paul McCartney cried when he heard it. “I didn’t even realize it,” he would recount to the news later. “Once it was over my face was wet. I didn’t know why at first.” John Cage, upon hearing it, reportedly took an eraser to a stack of his manuscript drafts and began to work feverishly at them. Since he heard it, Kanye West has never been known to use his voice; to this day, whenever he is asked even the simplest of questions he only shakes a heavy head. “It makes you feel like you’ve gone through life again,” Herbie Hancock tried to explain. “But you’re not yourself when you listen. It’s like you’re somewhere else, inside the music but outside the world at the same time. You can feel yourself grow up and grow old when you’re out there. Then, when it’s over, you fall back into yourself and it feels like you’ve never had a body before. Sometimes I have to watch myself move my fingers, just to be sure they’re really there, and that they’re mine.”
A week later, Quincy Jones, Madonna, and Thom Yorke announced that they would cease playing music and that all other musicians, besides the birds, should do the same. 99% of the world’s musicians agreed immediately. Lady Gaga tried to release another album, an ambitious three-disc set with four hours of music videos. It sold one copy, to her mother. To this day it sits unopened on Lady Gaga’s mother’s nightstand, under a stack of old New Yorkers. Keith Jarrett’s post-perfect album CD sold three copies, each to jazz collectors, one of whom unwrapped it an popped it into the CD tray. After three minutes and twenty-two seconds he was seen by neighbors throwing his CD player into the street, Keith Jarrett’s CD still inside. When Justin Bieber came to Fantasy Studios with a reluctant house band, he found the building deserted, the windows shattered, and all the equipment missing.
You couldn’t find an online copy of the perfect album; it only exists – or I should say “existed” – on vinyl. A London DJ tried to transfer it to his computer and gave up after five minutes, filled with remorse. An anonymously uploaded version circulated the internet and produced a moment of excitement for people who missed their iPods, but they quickly learned that the music was different. “Computers don’t understand it,” lamented Steve Jobs in an internationally televised announcement in which he announced that Apple would cease to produce portable mp3 players of any sort. “It’s too beautiful. It hurls us towards our eventual death and allows us to confront our loss of self without fear, and machines will never be able to understand that.”
The Red Cross decided that, in light of all the impoverished people around the globe who could not afford the perfect album, a turntable, or a speaker system, it was their duty to provide the unfortunate with this indispensable piece of art. Massive strike forces were sent out to each continent and disseminated into the countryside, lugging wagons filled to the brink. It was the greatest humanitarian effort ever known in human history. People from well-to-do families around the globe donated money and manpower to the effort. Rural areas without electricity witnessed power grids built to supply them with the energy needed to operate the stereo. Speakers of the native language gave lessons on how to operate the machine, culminating in a playing of the perfect album. These lessons ended in bear hugs, tears of epiphany, and unbearably lengthy goodbyes. It was estimated that less than a year after this project began that every household in the world owned at least one copy of the perfect album as well as the capacity to listen to it.
Soon after this successful effort a popular Japanese recording artist whose name has been lost to history claimed to have been the mastermind behind the perfect album. He was immediately ostracized and has been living in anonymous exile ever since, if in fact he is still alive.
Years and decades passed, and eventually a generation came to maturity who had never known a world without the perfect album, nor a world with albums less perfect. Some old record collections did exist still, mostly in libraries for archival purposes, or in personal collections for sentimental value. One wealthy family in Austria mounted their old records like photographs and lined them along surfaces around the house, including the worthless grand piano, to impress guests. The children in one South African elite family used old jewlcases for an imagination game, or as building blocks. The general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, in order to improve his team’s pitching, used his old records as targets for his struggling young pitchers. The team’s ERA dropped a full point in the following month, and soon teams all over the league were following suit. But no one ever listened to the old records just to listen, for pleasure’s sake. The perfect album was the be-all and end-all for listening, and as the children of the new generation grew up they found themselves in a world with only one piece of music to listen to.
And they began to wonder why. Most importantly, they wondered why the musician behind the perfect album, or anyone else for that matter, hadn’t composed a second. At the heart of the matter was their greed: they wanted more. One perfect album wasn’t enough. They were bored by hearing the same note collection over and over again, as if telling them what to think and how to feel. “If someone could give perfection such beauty,” the valedictorian of Harvard Law was once heard to say, “the same could be done for imperfection.”
The curious youth made their ways to the libraries and listened to the archives for pleasure, not for research. Those precious families who never threw out their CD players or CD collections found their teenage sons and daughters bringing friends over who dressed weirdly and listened to awful sounds, all the music from before the era of the perfect album. And as the parents disgustedly tried to switch off their rebellious offspring’s interest in the imperfect classics and grew deaf to their shouts of protest, they realized with horror that it wasn’t that their precious children had fallen into the wrong crowd but they had instead become the wrong crowd. “We have to nip this at the bud,” the Senator from Arkansas, a fiery seventy-six-year-old man, proclaimed to Congress. “We cannot risk having our youths tainted by the imperfect values of what used to pass for music.” Parents were encouraged to burn their old record collections, take a hammer to their old CD players, and rip the tape out of their old cassettes.
Many did, and the CD as a method for documenting sound was nearly lost forever. However, at this time the world’s youth made a number of technological breakthroughs. A pair of students at MIT, two shy sophomore women aged nineteen each, developed a way to cheaply build small CD players in a way that could easily be mass-produced – the reinvention of the headphone was to be completed by the same young women the following year. Around the same time a graduate student research team at Stanford University created a technology that could retrieve data from a CD and load it into a computer. So, as the previous generation busied themselves with the supposed extermination of all impure music, the young men and women of the world secretly circulated their underground technology and kept the flawed musics alive.
Some took this hungry zeal to the haughty extreme of musical reproduction. A Brazilian college student once voiced his depression that almost all the Antonio Carlos Jobim recordings had been lost forever. After searching for the lost sheet music and historical piano instructions around the world, then finding himself a splintered out-of tune piano, he taught himself over the period of two years how to replicate the lost music with his own two hands. “We’ll never know how beautiful it really sounded,” he said after an unpublicized concert, attended by over two hundred young people. A French Jimi Hendrix fan, in search for what historical archives documented as his most famous song, discovered an ultra-rare tablature transcription of “Purple Haze,” built himself a guitar based on photographs he had seen, and taught himself the piece. “I don’t understand how he could make the guitar sound so dirty,” he marveled to a friend. As a consequence distortion was reinvented, a project that would take years to complete, a project that some would say is still in progress. In Egypt a team of construction workers built a large wooden instrument with strings made of pig intestines, and they learned the Bach Cello Suites by ear from a Yo-Yo Ma recording. Until the reinvention of the bow five and a half years later, the new cello was played by scraping one’s fingernails lightly across the strings, a very rough approximation of the record’s sound. Alongside this musical renaissance, the young women from MIT, now recent graduates, developed high quality recording technology derived from the mediocre equipment normally utilized on a Hollywood movie set. They traveled around the globe in search of underground music preservationists, as they called themselves at the time, and recorded them.
The young women’s names have also been lost to history, but by their own choice. “Music,” one was heard to have said, “belongs to everyone.”
The older generation was nearsighted, but not dumb, and they began to see the underground trends after a time. Many seemed to give in to the changing times: “People don’t value perfection like they used to,” a sighing, old Australian woman summed up. Many tried to fight back, fight harder against the rising resistance of the young, and it was this attitude that would eventually doom the perfect album. There was a movement to outlaw CDs, originating in Spain and quickly spreading throughout Europe. The first country to make a law to this effect was Afghanistan, whose government decided to punish imperfect listeners with jail time. El Salvador followed suit with a similar law, and police were known to go door to door at unexpected hours and confiscate contraband CDs and the young men and women who were caught listening to them. The most extreme law was in Nigeria, where even possession of CDs or CD equipment could result in ten years of prison, though the reality was often longer. In Europe and North America the norm was to enforce a fine on the listener, and in extreme cases impose mandatory community service. The Chinese government developed an educational video series to show schoolchildren, demonstrating the risks of listening to imperfect music. The video contrasted two students, one who listened exclusively to the perfect album and one who listened exclusively to anything else. The student who listened to the perfect album was kind to his family, worked hard in school, and grew up to own an important multinational company. The student who refused to listen to the perfect album was lazy, snobby at home, and was lonely and unsuccessful in school. She eventually died of this laziness, although the video never made clear how.
The successful student was a boy, the unsuccessful one a girl, a distinction that nearly caused as much outrage among the music preservationists as the attack on music itself. Despite this, the video was translated into fifty-six languages; the average schoolchild saw it 5.2 times before entering high school. The only state in the United States of America not to air it was Florida, which was only because the state of Florida had filmed its own version with the same script, featuring a white boy and a Hispanic girl.
These draconian efforts only enflamed the preservationist movement more, which reacted to this attack with one of their own: a popular call to destroy any copies of the perfect album they could find. Parents returned home to find shards of vinyl on the carpet, accompanied sometimes by an apologetic teen (“I dropped it by accident”), sometimes by an inflammatory note (“Expression cannot be silenced!”). Anger turned to panic as the elder generation realized that the world’s supply of perfect albums had been used up decades ago, when the record stores closed and Amazon removed the music wing of its online shop. Now parents found themselves in the same position as their children were five years ago, huddling in the homes of their lucky friends who still owned a copy of the perfect album. Many marriages were broken by this practice; the intense experience of listening to the perfect album created an overwhelming intimacy between those present and often ended in sexual experiences between co-listeners as if in a dream, compelling them to be unfaithful to their spouses, the mothers and fathers of their children, without thinking of it. “I wasn’t even myself,” one Vancouver woman said to her enraged husband, who himself had had a secret affair days earlier. “I am filled with so much guilt I could die, but at the time I couldn’t do otherwise.” Despite this risk, detachment from the perfect album was far too great a loneliness than anyone could bear. The divorce rate skyrocketed.
As the elderly aged, fragmented, and grew cynical with the passing of these events, the youth movements snuck into power. It happened in Ecuador first, in a coup. After its success there were celebrations in the streets where people threw the perfect album to the ground and danced on its shards. By night’s end not a single perfect album existed in the country. Encouraged by Ecuador’s success, the rest of the world soon fell as if it had been balanced on a marble the whole time. The rest of South America changed power more or less peacefully, with the exception of Venezuela where the military, in a moment of confusion, shot on a crowd of not-so-peaceful protesters, killing nine and wounding forty-six. Music preservationists called it a massacre, and movements around the world grew even more intense. When Russia fell most of the elder generation knew the writing was on the wall. “I believe in democracy with all my heart,” growled the President of the United States of America. “If the people want Satanist imperfection to be the norm, so be it.”
He was not reelected. The power change in the United States and most other non-corrupt democracies came about by popular demand. The young elected other young, likeminded politicians. Most of the change happened overnight, over the course of a single election. The new Congress, an average of 12.6 years younger than previous, did only one thing before overturning the old censorship laws: it ordered the destruction of all remaining copies of the perfect album. Within a year the United States joined sixty-four other countries in reporting that no copies of the perfect album existed within its borders. Now, if any copies of the perfect album remain, only the most secretive know where to find them. They’ve been hidden away stealthily throughout the world, like Holy Grails or wise men atop mountains, meant to be searched for but impossible to find. Despite all modern-day assurances that any trace of the perfect record has been eliminated, you can see the disguised fear behind the youthfully democratic censors of today.
If he is still alive, I’m sure the artist behind the perfect album is dismayed at this blatant display of human nature. And if I could ask him about the perfect album, I’m sure he would insist there was nothing perfect about it.
Fine
-Sam goldsmith
No one is quite sure when the perfect album came into existence. Everyone went to sleep one night, and the next morning there it was. A music historian traced it as far back as he could and discovered very little of use; where it came from or who produced it, there being no language or illustrations on the jacket. There seemed to be no distributor, either; the perfect album simply appeared without announcement in record stores around the world, just as ghastly as it came into our lives. The music buyer at Amoeba Music in Los Angeles had no recollection of purchasing it: “I wish I could take the credit,” he said. After interviewing every employee at Amoeba within six months of the perfect record’s estimated release date, the music historian found that none of the employees could even remember stocking it. And yet there it was, waiting to be bought, and when it was the word spread like a rash. No one knows who bought the first copy. Stores didn’t catalogue the album, and how could they, for an album without genre, artist, producer, or title? It would come to pass, though, that over six billion people would own a copy.
The perfect album held the world hostage for a time – some say for a day, others a week – when businesses shut down as listeners failed to go to work. Streets were empty, cars left in their driveways, phones unused, televisions silent and black. It is said that Paul McCartney cried when he heard it. “I didn’t even realize it,” he would recount to the news later. “Once it was over my face was wet. I didn’t know why at first.” John Cage, upon hearing it, reportedly took an eraser to a stack of his manuscript drafts and began to work feverishly at them. Since he heard it, Kanye West has never been known to use his voice; to this day, whenever he is asked even the simplest of questions he only shakes a heavy head. “It makes you feel like you’ve gone through life again,” Herbie Hancock tried to explain. “But you’re not yourself when you listen. It’s like you’re somewhere else, inside the music but outside the world at the same time. You can feel yourself grow up and grow old when you’re out there. Then, when it’s over, you fall back into yourself and it feels like you’ve never had a body before. Sometimes I have to watch myself move my fingers, just to be sure they’re really there, and that they’re mine.”
A week later, Quincy Jones, Madonna, and Thom Yorke announced that they would cease playing music and that all other musicians, besides the birds, should do the same. 99% of the world’s musicians agreed immediately. Lady Gaga tried to release another album, an ambitious three-disc set with four hours of music videos. It sold one copy, to her mother. To this day it sits unopened on Lady Gaga’s mother’s nightstand, under a stack of old New Yorkers. Keith Jarrett’s post-perfect album CD sold three copies, each to jazz collectors, one of whom unwrapped it an popped it into the CD tray. After three minutes and twenty-two seconds he was seen by neighbors throwing his CD player into the street, Keith Jarrett’s CD still inside. When Justin Bieber came to Fantasy Studios with a reluctant house band, he found the building deserted, the windows shattered, and all the equipment missing.
You couldn’t find an online copy of the perfect album; it only exists – or I should say “existed” – on vinyl. A London DJ tried to transfer it to his computer and gave up after five minutes, filled with remorse. An anonymously uploaded version circulated the internet and produced a moment of excitement for people who missed their iPods, but they quickly learned that the music was different. “Computers don’t understand it,” lamented Steve Jobs in an internationally televised announcement in which he announced that Apple would cease to produce portable mp3 players of any sort. “It’s too beautiful. It hurls us towards our eventual death and allows us to confront our loss of self without fear, and machines will never be able to understand that.”
The Red Cross decided that, in light of all the impoverished people around the globe who could not afford the perfect album, a turntable, or a speaker system, it was their duty to provide the unfortunate with this indispensable piece of art. Massive strike forces were sent out to each continent and disseminated into the countryside, lugging wagons filled to the brink. It was the greatest humanitarian effort ever known in human history. People from well-to-do families around the globe donated money and manpower to the effort. Rural areas without electricity witnessed power grids built to supply them with the energy needed to operate the stereo. Speakers of the native language gave lessons on how to operate the machine, culminating in a playing of the perfect album. These lessons ended in bear hugs, tears of epiphany, and unbearably lengthy goodbyes. It was estimated that less than a year after this project began that every household in the world owned at least one copy of the perfect album as well as the capacity to listen to it.
Soon after this successful effort a popular Japanese recording artist whose name has been lost to history claimed to have been the mastermind behind the perfect album. He was immediately ostracized and has been living in anonymous exile ever since, if in fact he is still alive.
Years and decades passed, and eventually a generation came to maturity who had never known a world without the perfect album, nor a world with albums less perfect. Some old record collections did exist still, mostly in libraries for archival purposes, or in personal collections for sentimental value. One wealthy family in Austria mounted their old records like photographs and lined them along surfaces around the house, including the worthless grand piano, to impress guests. The children in one South African elite family used old jewlcases for an imagination game, or as building blocks. The general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, in order to improve his team’s pitching, used his old records as targets for his struggling young pitchers. The team’s ERA dropped a full point in the following month, and soon teams all over the league were following suit. But no one ever listened to the old records just to listen, for pleasure’s sake. The perfect album was the be-all and end-all for listening, and as the children of the new generation grew up they found themselves in a world with only one piece of music to listen to.
And they began to wonder why. Most importantly, they wondered why the musician behind the perfect album, or anyone else for that matter, hadn’t composed a second. At the heart of the matter was their greed: they wanted more. One perfect album wasn’t enough. They were bored by hearing the same note collection over and over again, as if telling them what to think and how to feel. “If someone could give perfection such beauty,” the valedictorian of Harvard Law was once heard to say, “the same could be done for imperfection.”
The curious youth made their ways to the libraries and listened to the archives for pleasure, not for research. Those precious families who never threw out their CD players or CD collections found their teenage sons and daughters bringing friends over who dressed weirdly and listened to awful sounds, all the music from before the era of the perfect album. And as the parents disgustedly tried to switch off their rebellious offspring’s interest in the imperfect classics and grew deaf to their shouts of protest, they realized with horror that it wasn’t that their precious children had fallen into the wrong crowd but they had instead become the wrong crowd. “We have to nip this at the bud,” the Senator from Arkansas, a fiery seventy-six-year-old man, proclaimed to Congress. “We cannot risk having our youths tainted by the imperfect values of what used to pass for music.” Parents were encouraged to burn their old record collections, take a hammer to their old CD players, and rip the tape out of their old cassettes.
Many did, and the CD as a method for documenting sound was nearly lost forever. However, at this time the world’s youth made a number of technological breakthroughs. A pair of students at MIT, two shy sophomore women aged nineteen each, developed a way to cheaply build small CD players in a way that could easily be mass-produced – the reinvention of the headphone was to be completed by the same young women the following year. Around the same time a graduate student research team at Stanford University created a technology that could retrieve data from a CD and load it into a computer. So, as the previous generation busied themselves with the supposed extermination of all impure music, the young men and women of the world secretly circulated their underground technology and kept the flawed musics alive.
Some took this hungry zeal to the haughty extreme of musical reproduction. A Brazilian college student once voiced his depression that almost all the Antonio Carlos Jobim recordings had been lost forever. After searching for the lost sheet music and historical piano instructions around the world, then finding himself a splintered out-of tune piano, he taught himself over the period of two years how to replicate the lost music with his own two hands. “We’ll never know how beautiful it really sounded,” he said after an unpublicized concert, attended by over two hundred young people. A French Jimi Hendrix fan, in search for what historical archives documented as his most famous song, discovered an ultra-rare tablature transcription of “Purple Haze,” built himself a guitar based on photographs he had seen, and taught himself the piece. “I don’t understand how he could make the guitar sound so dirty,” he marveled to a friend. As a consequence distortion was reinvented, a project that would take years to complete, a project that some would say is still in progress. In Egypt a team of construction workers built a large wooden instrument with strings made of pig intestines, and they learned the Bach Cello Suites by ear from a Yo-Yo Ma recording. Until the reinvention of the bow five and a half years later, the new cello was played by scraping one’s fingernails lightly across the strings, a very rough approximation of the record’s sound. Alongside this musical renaissance, the young women from MIT, now recent graduates, developed high quality recording technology derived from the mediocre equipment normally utilized on a Hollywood movie set. They traveled around the globe in search of underground music preservationists, as they called themselves at the time, and recorded them.
The young women’s names have also been lost to history, but by their own choice. “Music,” one was heard to have said, “belongs to everyone.”
The older generation was nearsighted, but not dumb, and they began to see the underground trends after a time. Many seemed to give in to the changing times: “People don’t value perfection like they used to,” a sighing, old Australian woman summed up. Many tried to fight back, fight harder against the rising resistance of the young, and it was this attitude that would eventually doom the perfect album. There was a movement to outlaw CDs, originating in Spain and quickly spreading throughout Europe. The first country to make a law to this effect was Afghanistan, whose government decided to punish imperfect listeners with jail time. El Salvador followed suit with a similar law, and police were known to go door to door at unexpected hours and confiscate contraband CDs and the young men and women who were caught listening to them. The most extreme law was in Nigeria, where even possession of CDs or CD equipment could result in ten years of prison, though the reality was often longer. In Europe and North America the norm was to enforce a fine on the listener, and in extreme cases impose mandatory community service. The Chinese government developed an educational video series to show schoolchildren, demonstrating the risks of listening to imperfect music. The video contrasted two students, one who listened exclusively to the perfect album and one who listened exclusively to anything else. The student who listened to the perfect album was kind to his family, worked hard in school, and grew up to own an important multinational company. The student who refused to listen to the perfect album was lazy, snobby at home, and was lonely and unsuccessful in school. She eventually died of this laziness, although the video never made clear how.
The successful student was a boy, the unsuccessful one a girl, a distinction that nearly caused as much outrage among the music preservationists as the attack on music itself. Despite this, the video was translated into fifty-six languages; the average schoolchild saw it 5.2 times before entering high school. The only state in the United States of America not to air it was Florida, which was only because the state of Florida had filmed its own version with the same script, featuring a white boy and a Hispanic girl.
These draconian efforts only enflamed the preservationist movement more, which reacted to this attack with one of their own: a popular call to destroy any copies of the perfect album they could find. Parents returned home to find shards of vinyl on the carpet, accompanied sometimes by an apologetic teen (“I dropped it by accident”), sometimes by an inflammatory note (“Expression cannot be silenced!”). Anger turned to panic as the elder generation realized that the world’s supply of perfect albums had been used up decades ago, when the record stores closed and Amazon removed the music wing of its online shop. Now parents found themselves in the same position as their children were five years ago, huddling in the homes of their lucky friends who still owned a copy of the perfect album. Many marriages were broken by this practice; the intense experience of listening to the perfect album created an overwhelming intimacy between those present and often ended in sexual experiences between co-listeners as if in a dream, compelling them to be unfaithful to their spouses, the mothers and fathers of their children, without thinking of it. “I wasn’t even myself,” one Vancouver woman said to her enraged husband, who himself had had a secret affair days earlier. “I am filled with so much guilt I could die, but at the time I couldn’t do otherwise.” Despite this risk, detachment from the perfect album was far too great a loneliness than anyone could bear. The divorce rate skyrocketed.
As the elderly aged, fragmented, and grew cynical with the passing of these events, the youth movements snuck into power. It happened in Ecuador first, in a coup. After its success there were celebrations in the streets where people threw the perfect album to the ground and danced on its shards. By night’s end not a single perfect album existed in the country. Encouraged by Ecuador’s success, the rest of the world soon fell as if it had been balanced on a marble the whole time. The rest of South America changed power more or less peacefully, with the exception of Venezuela where the military, in a moment of confusion, shot on a crowd of not-so-peaceful protesters, killing nine and wounding forty-six. Music preservationists called it a massacre, and movements around the world grew even more intense. When Russia fell most of the elder generation knew the writing was on the wall. “I believe in democracy with all my heart,” growled the President of the United States of America. “If the people want Satanist imperfection to be the norm, so be it.”
He was not reelected. The power change in the United States and most other non-corrupt democracies came about by popular demand. The young elected other young, likeminded politicians. Most of the change happened overnight, over the course of a single election. The new Congress, an average of 12.6 years younger than previous, did only one thing before overturning the old censorship laws: it ordered the destruction of all remaining copies of the perfect album. Within a year the United States joined sixty-four other countries in reporting that no copies of the perfect album existed within its borders. Now, if any copies of the perfect album remain, only the most secretive know where to find them. They’ve been hidden away stealthily throughout the world, like Holy Grails or wise men atop mountains, meant to be searched for but impossible to find. Despite all modern-day assurances that any trace of the perfect record has been eliminated, you can see the disguised fear behind the youthfully democratic censors of today.
If he is still alive, I’m sure the artist behind the perfect album is dismayed at this blatant display of human nature. And if I could ask him about the perfect album, I’m sure he would insist there was nothing perfect about it.
Fine
-Sam goldsmith
Monday, May 31, 2010
The One Tale From College: Submitted!
Ciao, Tutti!
Despite being on summer vacation officially, I have not been able to get much rest in reality, even though I've certainly been trying. I've been quite busy for an unemployed college grad on his "honeymoon." Just to recap:
1) While the TESOL certificate hasn't come to the house yet, it's only a matter of time. I'm currently looking for seasonal ESL work in New York city as well as a year's worth of employment in Istanbul. No rest!
2) My grades for my last semester came in: straight A's for the first time, pulling my GPA up to 3.9 if you're using only two significant figures. Smoking!
3) Two seconds ago, I submitted my short story "The One Tale From College" to Fence Magazine. Therefore I've removed it from the blog to avoid any possible legal difficulties. Also, a last second decision, I submitted the story under my pseudonym, S. P. Arrow, so don't be thrown by someone with that name having written exactly the same story I wrote.
4) I've got to write about some of the great books I've been reading and great CD's I've been listening to. I've been meaning to for a while, but some things just slip the mind sometimes... Suffice to say that I've been devouring novels and new music as if they don't exist in New York City.
Sorry for the wait. I'll be updating more often in the future. I bow and beg for forgiveness, or something like that.
-Sam goldsmith
Despite being on summer vacation officially, I have not been able to get much rest in reality, even though I've certainly been trying. I've been quite busy for an unemployed college grad on his "honeymoon." Just to recap:
1) While the TESOL certificate hasn't come to the house yet, it's only a matter of time. I'm currently looking for seasonal ESL work in New York city as well as a year's worth of employment in Istanbul. No rest!
2) My grades for my last semester came in: straight A's for the first time, pulling my GPA up to 3.9 if you're using only two significant figures. Smoking!
3) Two seconds ago, I submitted my short story "The One Tale From College" to Fence Magazine. Therefore I've removed it from the blog to avoid any possible legal difficulties. Also, a last second decision, I submitted the story under my pseudonym, S. P. Arrow, so don't be thrown by someone with that name having written exactly the same story I wrote.
4) I've got to write about some of the great books I've been reading and great CD's I've been listening to. I've been meaning to for a while, but some things just slip the mind sometimes... Suffice to say that I've been devouring novels and new music as if they don't exist in New York City.
Sorry for the wait. I'll be updating more often in the future. I bow and beg for forgiveness, or something like that.
-Sam goldsmith
Monday, May 17, 2010
Week 1 of CTESOL Classes
Ciao, Tutti!
I present my flowchart of the turbulent emotions of week 1 of my CTESOL (Certificate for Teaching English as a Second Language) classes:
Friday, May 7 - Cried in bed from loneliness, realizing all my best friends now live away from home, and I care about such things now. Went to the MET, but it didn't make me feel much better.
Saturday, May 8 - Had brunch with Owl Eyes before my flight. It's always exciting to spend time with those energetic friends of mine! Then caught my flight, which was delayed 3 1/2 hours and had to land in Salt Lake City to refuel.
Sunday, May 9 - Arrived home at 1:oo am. Any chance to get over jet-lag before classes started was squelched. Tried to have a relaxing day.
Monday, May 10 - Thrown into the mix. Handed a lesson to plan for "teacher practice" on the next day and another for Thursday. Apparently missed an important introductory week, and the instructor used TESOL jargon I'd never heard before (Lexis? Concept Check? Ss? What?????). Thank goodness there was another latecomer! Our instructor, though, is wonderful and patient, and already I learned a lot, enough to feel I could start my lesson plan without being completely blind. Longest day of classes since high school. How do those guys handle a full day of classes?
Speaking of high school, bumped into my high school English teacher on the way to the subway. We mutually pretended not to recognize each other.
Tuesday, May 11 - It turns out I've always been nervous in front of a class, though not knowing the level of the students beforehand didn't help. They were more advanced than I had anticipated, and I finished a little earlier than expected, even after using all my back-up activities. Overall, though? I was getting the hang of things around there, even though I was still yet to sleep well. Bonus: I finished John Wray's newest novel, Lowboy.
Wednesday, May 12 - J.J. Cale says: "Wednesday's hump day, hump day's Wednesday. The week's half gone." I felt so full after every lesson period that I can't even talk to people. The last time my head felt this heavy was... Cold War/Spy Novel class at NYU last semester. Speaking of NYU, as I was heading home on the train many of my friends were listen to Alec Baldwin at their - their - graduation ceremony. I was indescribably overjoyed I missed that!
Thursday, May 13 - The second class went much better than the first, even though things still didn't go as planned. I guess this means I'm learning something and getting better in general at this. Learned about teaching business English. I have no interest in teaching business English, but we still learned some interesting things about cultural awareness. All in all, our instructor rocks, and we earn our money's worth in the classroom.
Friday, May 14 - We talked about teaching children. Safe to say: parents can be creepy human beings at times. I'm much more afraid of a pair of them than a classroom of their bite-sized monsters. Went to Rasputin's in San Francisco to celebrate, hoping to buy the new LCD Soundsystem (which doesn't seem to come out until this Tuesday, sadly). Got scared by its size and headed home empty-handed.
Will there be a time in my life when I'm not tired out of my mind? Better yet, will I ever get a moment to celebrate my apparent graduation? Perhaps I'll be able to celebrate with a Turkish job interview and be amply prepared to teach English as a second language. Because in real life we don't get to let time stop, do we. Maybe that's why everyone else says the time has gone by so fast, when I feel like it's taken forever, and I'm still not done.
-Sam goldsmith
I present my flowchart of the turbulent emotions of week 1 of my CTESOL (Certificate for Teaching English as a Second Language) classes:
Friday, May 7 - Cried in bed from loneliness, realizing all my best friends now live away from home, and I care about such things now. Went to the MET, but it didn't make me feel much better.
Saturday, May 8 - Had brunch with Owl Eyes before my flight. It's always exciting to spend time with those energetic friends of mine! Then caught my flight, which was delayed 3 1/2 hours and had to land in Salt Lake City to refuel.
Sunday, May 9 - Arrived home at 1:oo am. Any chance to get over jet-lag before classes started was squelched. Tried to have a relaxing day.
Monday, May 10 - Thrown into the mix. Handed a lesson to plan for "teacher practice" on the next day and another for Thursday. Apparently missed an important introductory week, and the instructor used TESOL jargon I'd never heard before (Lexis? Concept Check? Ss? What?????). Thank goodness there was another latecomer! Our instructor, though, is wonderful and patient, and already I learned a lot, enough to feel I could start my lesson plan without being completely blind. Longest day of classes since high school. How do those guys handle a full day of classes?
Speaking of high school, bumped into my high school English teacher on the way to the subway. We mutually pretended not to recognize each other.
Tuesday, May 11 - It turns out I've always been nervous in front of a class, though not knowing the level of the students beforehand didn't help. They were more advanced than I had anticipated, and I finished a little earlier than expected, even after using all my back-up activities. Overall, though? I was getting the hang of things around there, even though I was still yet to sleep well. Bonus: I finished John Wray's newest novel, Lowboy.
Wednesday, May 12 - J.J. Cale says: "Wednesday's hump day, hump day's Wednesday. The week's half gone." I felt so full after every lesson period that I can't even talk to people. The last time my head felt this heavy was... Cold War/Spy Novel class at NYU last semester. Speaking of NYU, as I was heading home on the train many of my friends were listen to Alec Baldwin at their - their - graduation ceremony. I was indescribably overjoyed I missed that!
Thursday, May 13 - The second class went much better than the first, even though things still didn't go as planned. I guess this means I'm learning something and getting better in general at this. Learned about teaching business English. I have no interest in teaching business English, but we still learned some interesting things about cultural awareness. All in all, our instructor rocks, and we earn our money's worth in the classroom.
Friday, May 14 - We talked about teaching children. Safe to say: parents can be creepy human beings at times. I'm much more afraid of a pair of them than a classroom of their bite-sized monsters. Went to Rasputin's in San Francisco to celebrate, hoping to buy the new LCD Soundsystem (which doesn't seem to come out until this Tuesday, sadly). Got scared by its size and headed home empty-handed.
Will there be a time in my life when I'm not tired out of my mind? Better yet, will I ever get a moment to celebrate my apparent graduation? Perhaps I'll be able to celebrate with a Turkish job interview and be amply prepared to teach English as a second language. Because in real life we don't get to let time stop, do we. Maybe that's why everyone else says the time has gone by so fast, when I feel like it's taken forever, and I'm still not done.
-Sam goldsmith
Friday, May 7, 2010
Farewell to New York
Ciao, Tutti!
And arrivaderci, New York City.
As of 4:55 tomorrow afternoon, I will be on my way out of this cubist sculptor's paradise, finished with college as of yesterday having never truly diving into college life. And it makes perfect sense that I will be going out on a mood swing; New York is a giant mood swing in itself. Example: this morning I helped an older man open the gate to his jewelery shop and we shared a good laugh before I was to walk on, the green light on my side, and get my ears blown out by a taxi driver making a sharp right and speeding off at 40 miles per hour. Mood swings. New York can't decide between angry and jovial, overwhelming and accepting, antisocial and agoraphobic, and the city jerks like an awkward drunk between these poles.
And here I am, leaving in a mood swing of my own. I can't deny my hating it, as I always have, even though it's been years since I've last left a love life on the left coast. I've never liked cities, I've never liked concrete, and I've never liked large groups of people. But, despite all the obvious reasons for my refusal to like New York, I am drawn to it, falling under its spell. Because it's main attraction is people. The impressive buildings are only tall for a few days - the experienced New Yorker looks up only in surprise for the rare instance he sees the sun. The museums are so numerous that Miró begins to look like Michelangelo who begins to look like an ancient Egyptian temple. There are so many concerts that they are all mediocre with the pressure of cranking out 250 each night, and music veers away from innovation and towards survival, as all New Yorkers must learn to do. But once you get to know some of the individuals who somehow found their ways here - from the suburbs of Chicago, a mansion in the middle of nowhere upstate, a tiny town 45 minutes from Flint, Michigan, or from a Jewish Nashville outlier - and all have crazy or normal lives to lead them here, I can't help but become attached.
So it's not New York that I've grown fond of, just the strange collection of friends I've made like unpolished colored marbles. And yet, how can I separate these things? The friends are in New York; they live here as I have. They exist in this suffocating atmosphere and we are united by our survival instinct, our tenacity in keeping from being swallowed by it. Our comradery is not formed based off our unified weathering of a magnificent storm but in our communal strength in avoiding the storm altogether, the beautiful fact that we were all driven to suspend the storm from reality within each other's company. And this is what makes some of the people of New York so wonderful once you get to know them. They suspend the awful and smelly habitat of the city and replace it with a warm cooperative of their own. New York ceases to exist, but that which takes its place could not come to pass without the city laying the groundwork first. If only it weren't so! And yet it cannot be any other way, I and I try to have no regrets.
So I will leave this city and the people in it. I will miss the people in it and forever loathe the city, but I'll have to put up with it whenever I want my old close friendships back.
- Sam goldsmith
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Recap of the April 23 Owl Eyes Show
Ciao, Tutti!
Only good news today! Trees are green, flowers blooming, Owl Eyes selling out its second ever show so that some of the audience had to stand. Not only that, in the middle of "Everybody Has A Housepet," when Justina sang "Everybody has a housepet/Even if they do not realize it," someone in the crowd sang along! And did I mention that this was only our second show? I almost couldn't keep playing piano, I was so touched. Friends came, acquaintances who would soon become friends came, strangers who became fans came. I was so happy I couldn't sleep!
Photos are courtesy of Flaming Fire singer (and hottie) Amanda Sayle's phone:
In other good news, Justina's cast is now off! Just in time to go on tour, too (She's actually performing in Detroit right now)!
I think I've reached capacity for exclamation points.
-Sam goldsmith
Thursday, April 22, 2010
New Owl Eyes Drummer!
Ciao, Tutti!
Great news on the eve of the Owl Eyes concert tomorrow night! Our trio has now become a quartet: at rehearsal tonight we proposed to drummer Rosie Glassman. We got on our knees (one at a time... coordination wasn't on our side for this venture) and gave her a necklace with an owl insignia, along with a card that read, "Owl always be there for you." Then we asked her to be a permanent member in the band. It was the happiest moment in our band's short history!
Cue the awful iPhone photographs:
We're headed into the April 23 show with joy and warm feelings!
-Sam goldsmith
Great news on the eve of the Owl Eyes concert tomorrow night! Our trio has now become a quartet: at rehearsal tonight we proposed to drummer Rosie Glassman. We got on our knees (one at a time... coordination wasn't on our side for this venture) and gave her a necklace with an owl insignia, along with a card that read, "Owl always be there for you." Then we asked her to be a permanent member in the band. It was the happiest moment in our band's short history!
Cue the awful iPhone photographs:
We're headed into the April 23 show with joy and warm feelings!
-Sam goldsmith
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
New Owl Eyes Flier!
Ciao, Tutti!
Justina's friend Daniel Darwin just finished the new Owl Eyes flier for this Friday's show, and it turned out great! He's got some real talent. Eventually we'll have a whole book of these fliers, when we've "made it." Daniel's been enthusiastically volunteering all his time for these posters, so he's a real trooper if I've ever seen one.
Without further ado:
Hope to see you there!
-Sam goldsmith
Justina's friend Daniel Darwin just finished the new Owl Eyes flier for this Friday's show, and it turned out great! He's got some real talent. Eventually we'll have a whole book of these fliers, when we've "made it." Daniel's been enthusiastically volunteering all his time for these posters, so he's a real trooper if I've ever seen one.
Without further ado:
Hope to see you there!
-Sam goldsmith
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Owl Eyes Update: (I Don't Know What Comes After) Dust
Ciao, Tutti!
Owl Eyes has just uploaded a new song to our MySpace, a piece Jordan wrote called "(I Don't Know What Comes After) Dust." As with most demos, don't expect the highest quality, but it's still a wonderful piece of music and you should take a listen if you have the chance.
We're also playing a free show this Friday at about 8:00 at the lower east side's Sidewalk Cafe, where we will play 3 new original compositions and a cover of a special tune for all the ladies out there. Here's a hint as to what it is.
Also, we now have an Owl Eyes Twitter page. Thank you so much, Jordan and Justina, for maintaining it, since everyone knows I wouldn't touch Twitter with a ten foot pole. That said, you should all join it. We've got some hot ideas brewing regarding impromptu acoustic concerts in public places, really laid back, really fun. And the best way to learn about them, regrettably, will be by following us on Twitter. Plus, you should follow us because we're simply that cool, and Jordan and Justina have the talent for writing deep, profound things in just 140 characters (unlike me with this lengthy blog posts).
While we're at it: Owl Eyes on Facebook, Owl Eyes on MySpace. There, we've covered all the bases. Hope to see more of you online!
-Sam goldsmith
Friday, April 16, 2010
HSLI Photos Are Online!
Ciao, Tutti!
All photos from the High School Law Institute graduation are now online! You can find them by clicking on this link. Don't forget, I took each and every picture (the other photographers didn't think they needed to bring cameras, for some reason I cannot even begin to fathom...). Enjoy!
-Sam goldsmith
All photos from the High School Law Institute graduation are now online! You can find them by clicking on this link. Don't forget, I took each and every picture (the other photographers didn't think they needed to bring cameras, for some reason I cannot even begin to fathom...). Enjoy!
-Sam goldsmith
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Short Story - Responsibility
Ciao, Tutti!
I have a new sudden fiction story for you all - only 245 words, a short read! Also I've added a link at the top of the page labeled "Short Stories" (next to "Recordings) where you can easily find the links to the other stories on this blog. Enjoy!
I have a new sudden fiction story for you all - only 245 words, a short read! Also I've added a link at the top of the page labeled "Short Stories" (next to "Recordings) where you can easily find the links to the other stories on this blog. Enjoy!
"I love you," she said after I took the chair across from her desk. I had never met her before, and besides the regulation-sized photo on my résumé lying in a manila folder in front of her she had never once laid eyes on me. But I could hear the sincerity in the moan in her voice, in the reddened eyes watered by coffee after tossing and turning through the night, in the almost perfect mastery in hastily tying her hair. I could see in those eyes all the candidates before me, dressed as I was in polished shoes and a striped tie, a copy of today's Wall Street Journal tucked under the arm. I could imagine how each reacted, their eyes locking on their knees, their nervous laughter, their stammering as they thought of the proper response, their hands clasped together until their knuckles whitened. Some must have asked her to repeat herself, unsure of their ears. Some must have wondered what place a declaration of love had in the application process. Some must have thought they were in the wrong room. Some must have replied, unsure and untruthfully, that they loved her, too, hoping that was the correct answer. All were sent immediately from the room, left to wonder. And now I sat, staring into her lonely eyes, and responded with complete honesty, repeating her phrase with the final word missing. She nodded, understanding in her downcast eyes, and I was dismissed.-Sam goldsmith
Saturday, April 10, 2010
HSLI Graduation
Ciao, Tutti!
Today was the final day of the High School Law Institute, the day of a massive mock trial competition - NYU vs. Columbia - and the distribution of graduation diplomas. It was an action-packed celebratory day, and I caught most of it with my camera. Check it out!
The crowded scene at breakfast
A section teacher briefing his students for the trial
NYU section 1 with their diplomas (I don't have any pictures of section 3 because that was my section and I was on stage with them)
Megan Cunningham of the HSLI board, introducing our speaker
Craig Levine, our guest speaker (also featured on the photo at the top of the post)
The "know your rights" posters in the hallway
-Sam goldsmith
Monday, April 5, 2010
New Flaming Fire Photos!
Ciao, Tutti!
Remember my post from yesterday where I wrote that I didn't have the right to upload the new amazing Flaming Fire publicity photos? Well, as of a few minutes ago those photos miraculously showed up on facebook. Permission assumed, I'm going to go ahead and share my favorites with you. Click to enlarge, as well as see in better quality.
All the photos were taken by Adam Schneider, and he did a wonderful job ranging from image design to down-to-earth photography expertise.
The background is an Eternal Christmas mural designed by Camila Ha.
From left to right: Me, Trent, Stirling, Justina, Sarah, Patrick, Amanda, and Chris
I held a couple of rolls of colored cellophane to make this shot work. That's the bassist's job: holding the band together!
-Sam goldsmith
Sunday, April 4, 2010
A Step Back
Ciao, Tutti!
Let's take a step back and look at all the exciting things that seem to be happening all around me, so fast and so wonderful!
1) West 10th Reading: Yesterday (April 3, 2010) I read an except of "A Fascinating Line" at the release for West 10th in front of a packed audience of about 50 (I'm sure it was a fire hazard...). Friends came, including friends I didn't expect. All in all it was a great success! I walked out with 10 copies for my family under my arm. Check out the front cover at the top of the post and the back cover below (with my name on it! One of only 6 fiction entries that were accepted!).
Click to enlarge
2) Flaming Fire at Glamdammit: Just after the reading I headed back to my crib (heh!), threw on an all-red outfit, my bass, and a cab to Don Hill's to play the first Flaming Fire gig since December at the happenin' all-night-long glam rock dance party Glamdammit. It was an emotional experience for me since I will probably have moved away from New York before the band plays another show, so I gave it my all. Drenched myself in sweat, tore up my fingers on the bass, jumped around the stage, rocked everyone's socks off. It was one of our best shows since I've joined. I'm glad I get to go out with a bang.
Our publicity photos from February are in, but since they haven't been released yet I can't post them. Instead, enjoy a picture of these variations on tea:
3) Onward to the future! My life was supposed to get easier after my recital. Less busy, more time for writing and submitting short stories, blah blah blah. Here's the exciting reality:
This Thursday, April 8, 2010, at 11:45 pm, Owl Eyes will play its first live show, a free concert at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn. We will add the lovely Rosie Glassman on the drum set. Let me tell you, she adds a whole new dimension to the music. I hope we can get her to sing a little, too, sometime in the future. If you can come you won't be disappointed! Cue the creepy and amazing flier drawn by Justina's roommate Daniel:
On April 9 at the Jazz School in Berkeley my old friend Peter Hargreaves is putting on a benefit concert for an educational organization in Guatemala (if that sounds vague it's because I'm not sure I understand it myself). He has written a bunch of music for the show, including a string quartet, but he also asked me and a few other friends - including the great Peter Apfelbaum - to write pieces. I'll be only 3,000 miles away, but the band will perform a jazz quartet piece of mine called "Insomnia." If you're in town you should check it out, and don't feel indulgent when you drop the $10: it's for a good cause.
Then, a week from this Wednesday (= on April 14, 2010), two great things happen. First, the Historian comes into existence, hot off the press. I hope I'll be able to attend the release event, but if not it's because I'll be playing at the Jazz Gallery with the NYU Ralph Alessi Ensemble at 8:00 pm. That's the second great thing. The Jazz Gallery is the best music venue in New York city, possibly the world, and they didn't pay me to say that. It's not free, but it's worth the 10 bucks.
In case you've forgotten about Owl Eyes in the course of the last paragraph, we have a second gig lined up for April 23 at the Sidewalk Cafe. I honestly don't know much about this venue - we're taking things one step at a time - but I do know it's free (once again), it's in Manhattan, and we'll be given enough time to play out our entire repertoire. Sweetness!
I will be playing a couple of recitals as well: Drummer Alex Kurland's on April 25 where I will do my best imitation of Gary Burton, and composer Leo Birenberg on April 28 where me and saxophonist Rob Jacoby will premier the second movement of a piece of Leo's I played at my recital entitled "Divertissement," assuming Leo ever gets me the music for it. If the second movement is as good as the first then that piece alone will be worth the price of admission. It's free, by the way.
I'm tired just thinking about all these things. What a life! And I still have a novel to edit, too. Man!
-Sam goldsmith
P.S. In case you didn't notice, I figured out how to use links in this post. I kinda went nuts doing it, too, so be a dear and click on one, okay?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sam Goldsmith's Index of Things That (Probably) Will and Will Not Happen
Ciao, Tutti!
For all those who are huddled in anticipation of the release of my post-graduation plans, I've compiled a list of probablies regarding ideas I'd been having and goals I've wished to pursue. Seriously, though, being asked what I plan to do after school is simultaneously the most stressful, exciting, and trite question in the entire world... it fills me with mixed feelings.
But what I want to do most of all is heroine... wait, did I spell it like a drug or a female hero?
That's a terrible pun, folks. Don't write like me.
Index of Probablies
WILL: Have my first East Coast Passover Seder with my cousin Alana and her friends and family.
WILL NOT: Tour Europe with Flaming Fire.
WILL NOT: Stay in New York for any part of the summer.
WILL: Begin classes for my TESOL certification in order to teach English abroad, starting May 10th.
WILL NOT: Attend NYU graduation ceremonies, which start May 11.
WILL: Walk the 13-mile-or-so length of Manhattan Island before I leave New York, even though my mother has an irrational fear that it is unsafe.
WILL NOT: Get mugged. Seriously.
WILL: Have my best semester academically ever, again.
WILL: Play pieces in at least two other people's recitals.
WILL NOT: Work at summer camp in El Cerrito as I have the past 3 summers, at least for the same amount of time as in the past. It's looking more and more like I don't have the 8 weeks I need to commit to be a full-time counselor.
WILL: Travel, within the states. I think my friend Courtney has gotten to me. I have events that would take me to Michigan, North Carolina, Yosemite, and even back to ugly old New York City.
WILL NOT: Ever warm up to New York City.
WILL: Continue to submit short stories, now to non-NYU affiliated journals. Opium and Bellevue Literary Reviews seem like good starting points, especially the BLR's contest.
WILL NOT: Know how I fared in the BLR's contest until December of this year.
WILL: Begin applying for English teaching jobs in Istanbul, Turkey, starting June.
WILL: Move to Turkey in mid-late August to stay for the year.
WILL: Apply for graduate school at some point once I'm done teaching in Turkey.
WILL NOT: Think farther ahead than that.
WILL NOT: Give Dr. Schroeder the benefit of the doubt anymore.
WILL NOT: Look back with regret.
-Sam goldsmith
For all those who are huddled in anticipation of the release of my post-graduation plans, I've compiled a list of probablies regarding ideas I'd been having and goals I've wished to pursue. Seriously, though, being asked what I plan to do after school is simultaneously the most stressful, exciting, and trite question in the entire world... it fills me with mixed feelings.
But what I want to do most of all is heroine... wait, did I spell it like a drug or a female hero?
That's a terrible pun, folks. Don't write like me.
Index of Probablies
WILL: Have my first East Coast Passover Seder with my cousin Alana and her friends and family.
WILL NOT: Tour Europe with Flaming Fire.
WILL NOT: Stay in New York for any part of the summer.
WILL: Begin classes for my TESOL certification in order to teach English abroad, starting May 10th.
WILL NOT: Attend NYU graduation ceremonies, which start May 11.
WILL: Walk the 13-mile-or-so length of Manhattan Island before I leave New York, even though my mother has an irrational fear that it is unsafe.
WILL NOT: Get mugged. Seriously.
WILL: Have my best semester academically ever, again.
WILL: Play pieces in at least two other people's recitals.
WILL NOT: Work at summer camp in El Cerrito as I have the past 3 summers, at least for the same amount of time as in the past. It's looking more and more like I don't have the 8 weeks I need to commit to be a full-time counselor.
WILL: Travel, within the states. I think my friend Courtney has gotten to me. I have events that would take me to Michigan, North Carolina, Yosemite, and even back to ugly old New York City.
WILL NOT: Ever warm up to New York City.
WILL: Continue to submit short stories, now to non-NYU affiliated journals. Opium and Bellevue Literary Reviews seem like good starting points, especially the BLR's contest.
WILL NOT: Know how I fared in the BLR's contest until December of this year.
WILL: Begin applying for English teaching jobs in Istanbul, Turkey, starting June.
WILL: Move to Turkey in mid-late August to stay for the year.
WILL: Apply for graduate school at some point once I'm done teaching in Turkey.
WILL NOT: Think farther ahead than that.
WILL NOT: Give Dr. Schroeder the benefit of the doubt anymore.
WILL NOT: Look back with regret.
-Sam goldsmith
Monday, March 22, 2010
My Dear (Live)
Ciao, Tutti!
I fell in love with a stranger. His eyes were golden and his smile was wide. Enjoy the newest live movie from March 7, and forgive the camerawork. I was on stage - I had nothing to do with it.
Featuring the amazing Greg Englar on the guitar.
-Sam goldsmith
I fell in love with a stranger. His eyes were golden and his smile was wide. Enjoy the newest live movie from March 7, and forgive the camerawork. I was on stage - I had nothing to do with it.
Featuring the amazing Greg Englar on the guitar.
-Sam goldsmith
Thursday, March 18, 2010
New Live Music Videos! - "Rose-Colored Spectacles" and "Steel Woman"
Ciao, Tutti!
I've been working on some of the videos from the recital on March 7. Check it out!
Enjoy!
-Sam goldsmith
I've been working on some of the videos from the recital on March 7. Check it out!
Enjoy!
-Sam goldsmith
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Memories From The Recital
Ciao, Tutti!
The recital was an unmitigated success! Not only did I have the best band in the world but I also had the best audience in the world, if only for about an hour and fifteen minutes. It was fun for everyone, even the musicians with their quite-challenging music, and even for those who had to spend a song or two standing in the doorway, scanning the crowd for empty chairs.
After the show me and the musicians and my wonderful family who traveled from far and wide to see the recital all went to the Three of Cups for a huge dinner. Those of you who know me know I'm not so good with groups, but I have to say it was a wonderful thing to finally be able to talk with these musicians without the scepter of recital hanging over our heads, to get to know each other a little better as more than musicians. We're people, too!
Eh, it could have been the wine.
The live recording of Justina Flash's "Rose-Colored Spectacles" is now on the official Owl Eyes MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/owleyesarewatchingyou You can reach the site from the sidebar on the left. The recording from Sunday's concert is labeled "Rose-Colored Spectacles (live)." Check it out! Julian Pollack and my all-star string section kicked some royal behind on this number.
One of my friends in the music technology program was so taken by Leo Birenberg's piece "Divertissement" that he wants to record it on the state-of-the-art NYU Steinhardt recording studio. The piece is a duet with me on vibes and the supremely talented Rob Jacoby on alto sax, and it is, needless to say, beautifully composed by Leo. I would be overjoyed to have a crisp, professional recording of the piece. Keep your ears peeled! It's in the talk stage right now, but it could happen!
More photos, videos, and audio tracks will be appearing here and there as I work on them. Keep your eyes out! As for now, enjoy these photos taken by my dad and my Aunt Linda.
I think we were playing "Snap" when this photo was taken. Leo Birenberg was an enormous stabilizing influence with his conducting. He's got his fist up in this photo. I guess we were on our way to a new section of the tune.
My dear Papa. How I love him!
In the last of the news for today, my two publications coming up in April, my essay for the Historian about Costa Rica and my short story for West 10th Street entitled "A Fascinating Line" have been sent to the publisher! The spring edition of the Historian is looking to come into print availability on April 14, and volume 3 of West 10th Street comes out on April 3! This is just another way of saying: this is a very exciting time of my life!
Hope all is well,
-Sam goldsmith
Monday, March 1, 2010
Owl Eyes Preliminary Publicity Photo
Ciao, Tutti!
With Owl Eyes looking for gigs we've started to take some rough photos. Eventually we'll do something more professional, ie. not taken from the seat of Jordan's toilet through his bathroom door. But, on the other hand, what we've got looks pretty great so far. Take a look!
Jordan
Me (Justina gave me those glasses! For keeps! They're called the "Owl Eyes Glasses." Pretty cool, no?)
Justina
We'll take some more once we have a fourth person to hold the camera. Stay tuned! And don't forget our first show is at Goodbye Blue Monday at 11:45 on April 8.
In other news, my senior recital is shaping up to be more and more awesome with each passing breath. In other words, I've started getting nervous! Which shows how much I care!
It also means no basketball playing for me until it's over. No crippling hand injuries, please! Also no Re:Write Review this Wednesday. I don't have time to be inspired to write short stories. I have rehearsals to organize, clothes to buy, pieces to tirelessly practice. Oh, and homework doesn't stop for my recital, either. And it's mid-term season. Yay...
But most importantly, it means you should come if you're still making up your mind. Again, it's in room 779 of 35 West 4th street at 6:00, Sunday, March 7. Free. There will be snacks. Come!
Final thought to share with all of you: I just bought TV On The Radio's "Young Liars" in CD form to make up for the rotten quality of the iTunes tracks I've been relying on so far. The difference between 5 MB and 50 MB sized song is enormous. 10x in fact. And I'm convinced that this 5-track EP is the most beautifully recorded piece of all time. When I listen to "Young Liars" or "Mr. Grieves" I can almost hear the walls of the Brooklyn bedroom it was recorded in. The sound is that rich. If you have the chance to listen to any music with full quality and a nice set of headphones or speakers, try "Young Liars." You all know how much I love TV On The Radio. This is by far their best work. Seriously. Do it.
Next stop: Vinyl!
One more image before I go:
Jordan and Hubert
-Sam goldsmith
Friday, February 26, 2010
Recital Poster!
Ciao, Tutti!
Now announcing: the official Sam Goldsmith Senior Recital Poster! Photography courtesy of my friend Aurora, who is super cool and is loved by all who know her. Here's the good stuff:
Make sure you check out the wonderful news from Tuesday if you haven't already. I'm still on a high from it all!
-Sam goldsmith
P.S. Just noticed a bit too late: I've been spelling Patti's name wrong the whole time! Well, just so you know, I've caught the error. Sorry, Patti!
Now announcing: the official Sam Goldsmith Senior Recital Poster! Photography courtesy of my friend Aurora, who is super cool and is loved by all who know her. Here's the good stuff:
Make sure you check out the wonderful news from Tuesday if you haven't already. I'm still on a high from it all!
-Sam goldsmith
P.S. Just noticed a bit too late: I've been spelling Patti's name wrong the whole time! Well, just so you know, I've caught the error. Sorry, Patti!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sam Goes 2-0
Ciao, Tutti!
Well, I've got good news, and I've got more good news.
1) I just received word that my short story "A Fascinating Line" has been accepted into the publication West 10th Street! You can look out for it on April 3rd, when there will be a release party on - who woulda thunk? - West 10th Street. I'm super psyched about this; it mean's I'm a perfect 2 and 0 for submission season, between this and The Historian! I guess this means it's time to start submitting elsewhere... Look out, world!
2) Owl Eyes will be playing the first show, live, on Thursday, April 8, at 11:45 at Goodbye Blue Monday (in affectionate remembrance of Kurt Vonnegut). We've started playing with a drummer, Gabe, who subbed in with Flaming Fire for a couple of shows and really knows how to rock the place. Sweet! Thanks to Justina for doing the dirty work and getting us the place. Now all we've got to do is pack it!
In other music performance news: My senior recital is still scheduled for Sunday, March 7, at 6:00 at 35 West 4th street, room 779. And it's still planned to be mind-shattering.
Also, the Ralph Alessi ensembles will be playing at the Jazz Gallery, as we have done before, on Wednesday, April 14. It will be as cool as a rabbit wearing shades.
Now I'm off to celebrate! Yippee!
-Sam goldsmith
Well, I've got good news, and I've got more good news.
1) I just received word that my short story "A Fascinating Line" has been accepted into the publication West 10th Street! You can look out for it on April 3rd, when there will be a release party on - who woulda thunk? - West 10th Street. I'm super psyched about this; it mean's I'm a perfect 2 and 0 for submission season, between this and The Historian! I guess this means it's time to start submitting elsewhere... Look out, world!
2) Owl Eyes will be playing the first show, live, on Thursday, April 8, at 11:45 at Goodbye Blue Monday (in affectionate remembrance of Kurt Vonnegut). We've started playing with a drummer, Gabe, who subbed in with Flaming Fire for a couple of shows and really knows how to rock the place. Sweet! Thanks to Justina for doing the dirty work and getting us the place. Now all we've got to do is pack it!
In other music performance news: My senior recital is still scheduled for Sunday, March 7, at 6:00 at 35 West 4th street, room 779. And it's still planned to be mind-shattering.
Also, the Ralph Alessi ensembles will be playing at the Jazz Gallery, as we have done before, on Wednesday, April 14. It will be as cool as a rabbit wearing shades.
Now I'm off to celebrate! Yippee!
-Sam goldsmith
Monday, February 15, 2010
Owl Eyes Have a MySpace!
Ciao, Tutti!
Some good news for all you music fans out there: Owl Eyes is finally getting off the ground an has posted a MySpace page! You may find it on the left-hand column. There you can listen to our songs "Rose-Colored Spectacles" and "Pleasure Dive," both written by Justina Flash and performed by her, Jordan Wolosky, and myself. Venues like it if our MySpace has a lot of hits (hint, hint).
In other news, about 109,000 people watched the NBA all-star game live at the Dallas Cowboy's stadium where it was hosted. Not only that, the stadium, as many of you might already know, hosts the biggest HD TV in the world, which was bigger than the court itself. At first I thought it was just a trick of the camera. But, alas, the world really has sunk that low. I don't know why that depresses me so much, but it does.
-Sam goldsmith
Some good news for all you music fans out there: Owl Eyes is finally getting off the ground an has posted a MySpace page! You may find it on the left-hand column. There you can listen to our songs "Rose-Colored Spectacles" and "Pleasure Dive," both written by Justina Flash and performed by her, Jordan Wolosky, and myself. Venues like it if our MySpace has a lot of hits (hint, hint).
In other news, about 109,000 people watched the NBA all-star game live at the Dallas Cowboy's stadium where it was hosted. Not only that, the stadium, as many of you might already know, hosts the biggest HD TV in the world, which was bigger than the court itself. At first I thought it was just a trick of the camera. But, alas, the world really has sunk that low. I don't know why that depresses me so much, but it does.
-Sam goldsmith
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Slam Dunk Contest?
Ciao, Tutti!
It's time to complain about something! Oh, boy!
I just got finished watching the NBA slam dunk contest. And, uh, it sucked? Yeah, it sucked. I think I had more fun... I dunno, sleeping, or something.
One thing I was glad about, on the other hand, was how frank the TNT announcers were about it. You would expect a candid opinion from Charles Barkley, but the other guys, too? Some rookie on the Raptors, DeRozan, made a dunk that "woke them up" about mid way through. Other than that the commentators spent the entire telecast romanticizing about slam dunk contests past and wishing they could suit up and show these pretenders how to dunk.
Just like the all-star voting that allowed Allan Iverson a starting position in tomorrow's came had he been healthy, it seems that everything except the word "break" needs renovation in the NBA all star game. There's simply no reason left to watch, and then what's the point?
In other news, there's a new trailer for "The Last Airbender," which actually doesn't look horrible. That is, unless you're fond of the characters from the TV show. But I'm still excited. And it looks visually exciting. And they're taking out advertising space on the ESPN NBA site. A fantasy movie based on a kid's animated show is advertising to NBA fans. Next I'll see a nun with a tattoo of a flaming guitar on her forehead.
The movie comes out July 2. Anyone want to see it at midnight with me?
Flaming Fire's new installation art space is open! It's called the Silver Salon and it's located on 539 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, New York. You should check it out if you're around town, and especially if you missed Eternal Christmas.
Now I'm off to work on recital music! Up, up and away!
-Sam goldsmith
It's time to complain about something! Oh, boy!
I just got finished watching the NBA slam dunk contest. And, uh, it sucked? Yeah, it sucked. I think I had more fun... I dunno, sleeping, or something.
One thing I was glad about, on the other hand, was how frank the TNT announcers were about it. You would expect a candid opinion from Charles Barkley, but the other guys, too? Some rookie on the Raptors, DeRozan, made a dunk that "woke them up" about mid way through. Other than that the commentators spent the entire telecast romanticizing about slam dunk contests past and wishing they could suit up and show these pretenders how to dunk.
Just like the all-star voting that allowed Allan Iverson a starting position in tomorrow's came had he been healthy, it seems that everything except the word "break" needs renovation in the NBA all star game. There's simply no reason left to watch, and then what's the point?
In other news, there's a new trailer for "The Last Airbender," which actually doesn't look horrible. That is, unless you're fond of the characters from the TV show. But I'm still excited. And it looks visually exciting. And they're taking out advertising space on the ESPN NBA site. A fantasy movie based on a kid's animated show is advertising to NBA fans. Next I'll see a nun with a tattoo of a flaming guitar on her forehead.
The movie comes out July 2. Anyone want to see it at midnight with me?
Flaming Fire's new installation art space is open! It's called the Silver Salon and it's located on 539 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, New York. You should check it out if you're around town, and especially if you missed Eternal Christmas.
Now I'm off to work on recital music! Up, up and away!
-Sam goldsmith
Friday, February 5, 2010
Some News About History and Music
Ciao, Tutti!
Long time no see.
Even though I've been away for a while now I don't have all that much to say. I don't have any short stories that are polished enough to share, and Flaming Fire has been on hiatus as our leader copes with his newborn. Still, as the first post I'm making in 2010, I feel I should start with a bang. So here it is:
1) Recital Mania!
My recital date has been given to me finally! That's the good news. Bad news is they gave me the one day I wanted least: March 7, at 6:00. That's a Sunday, when I knew some members of the family wouldn't be able to make it. On the plus side, though, my cellist wouldn't have been able to perform on the 6th, the day I wanted. How 'bout them apples, destiny?
I am currently wrapping up the music creation part of the program with my wonderful teacher Gil Goldstein, which promises to be a set of 12 pieces like none other. It will feature approximately 15 different performers, which, incidentally, would have probably been my only audience. But I don't care. This is Sparta. Or something.
It will feature:
- Me (Vibes, piano, bass, vocals, compositions, arrangements)
- The Inspiration Sextet with special guest Julian Waterfall Pollack on Piano
- The 4-string Trio
- Guest Conductor and Composer Leo Birenberg
- Special Guest Greg Englar on Guitar Insanity
- Owl Eyes
It is located in room 779 (they screwed me with the worst room, too) of 25 West 4th street, Manhattan, New York, 10003, in some universe or another.
2) First Ever Real Publication!
About a week ago I received word that my essay about the shape of Costa Rican nationalism in 1921 has been accepted into "The Historian," the NYU undergraduate history journal! I'm still giddy just thinking about it. I've been working with an editor throughout the month of February and will submit a final draft by the end of the month. Hopefully the publication will be available to the public sometime in April!
Who knew my first publication would be a history paper and not a short story? Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for word from the NYU creative writing journal, which I am expecting to hear from in March, as well as the Re:Write Review, which sort of runs on its own schedule. Now that I'm done novelling for a while I should be able to devote some more meaningful attention to my short stories, I hope...
3) Good Times
I don't actually have anything else leaping to mind to share with all ye good lot. Hope everything is going well for you all, and be sure not to burn the chicken.
-Sam goldsmith
Long time no see.
Even though I've been away for a while now I don't have all that much to say. I don't have any short stories that are polished enough to share, and Flaming Fire has been on hiatus as our leader copes with his newborn. Still, as the first post I'm making in 2010, I feel I should start with a bang. So here it is:
1) Recital Mania!
My recital date has been given to me finally! That's the good news. Bad news is they gave me the one day I wanted least: March 7, at 6:00. That's a Sunday, when I knew some members of the family wouldn't be able to make it. On the plus side, though, my cellist wouldn't have been able to perform on the 6th, the day I wanted. How 'bout them apples, destiny?
I am currently wrapping up the music creation part of the program with my wonderful teacher Gil Goldstein, which promises to be a set of 12 pieces like none other. It will feature approximately 15 different performers, which, incidentally, would have probably been my only audience. But I don't care. This is Sparta. Or something.
It will feature:
- Me (Vibes, piano, bass, vocals, compositions, arrangements)
- The Inspiration Sextet with special guest Julian Waterfall Pollack on Piano
- The 4-string Trio
- Guest Conductor and Composer Leo Birenberg
- Special Guest Greg Englar on Guitar Insanity
- Owl Eyes
It is located in room 779 (they screwed me with the worst room, too) of 25 West 4th street, Manhattan, New York, 10003, in some universe or another.
2) First Ever Real Publication!
About a week ago I received word that my essay about the shape of Costa Rican nationalism in 1921 has been accepted into "The Historian," the NYU undergraduate history journal! I'm still giddy just thinking about it. I've been working with an editor throughout the month of February and will submit a final draft by the end of the month. Hopefully the publication will be available to the public sometime in April!
Who knew my first publication would be a history paper and not a short story? Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for word from the NYU creative writing journal, which I am expecting to hear from in March, as well as the Re:Write Review, which sort of runs on its own schedule. Now that I'm done novelling for a while I should be able to devote some more meaningful attention to my short stories, I hope...
3) Good Times
I don't actually have anything else leaping to mind to share with all ye good lot. Hope everything is going well for you all, and be sure not to burn the chicken.
-Sam goldsmith
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